The Singing Stone Pass did not forget. It whispered with every footstep, the echoes of ancient voices rising from the stone, curling through the quartz-veined walls like ghosts of lost conversations. Gwyn did not trust it. Bedwyr listened. Galahad measured each breath against the weight of history. Skif, jittering between them, clutched the hilt of a dagger too small to matter but too precious to release.

The deeper they ventured through the pass, the less real the world behind them felt. Light from the crystalline veins grew dimmer, pulsing at sluggish intervals, as if struggling to maintain its existence.

Then the carvings began.

Gwyn was the first to spot them—not the grand reliefs of Fae warriors she had anticipated, but simple, deeply engraved names along the walls. Names of wardens. Names of guardians. A roll call of those who had once kept watch over Titania’s Veil.

But some were absent. Not eroded. Not weather-worn. Just… gone.

Entire sections of stone bore the scars of vanished text. The further they walked, the more gaps appeared. Places where names should have been, replaced only by jagged indentations, as if something had reached into the rock and removed them.

Bedwyr’s fingers brushed the empty spaces. He hummed a note—soft, searching. No echo returned.

“That’s wrong,” Skif muttered.

Galahad took a steadying breath. “Something has wiped them away. This isn’t time wearing them down. It’s intent.”

Gwyn’s voice was low, rough. “They were erased.”

Bedwyr turned, his expression unreadable. “Then who remembers them?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? If history had forgotten them, who—or what—was left to recall the wardens of Titania’s Veil?

A sound answered him.

It was neither stone shifting, nor the low hum of the singing pass, and not even a whisper.

It was breathing.

Deep. Measured. Slow.

A presence unseen, but felt. A pressure against the bones of the pass, like something resting just beyond perception, waiting.

Gwyn’s hand went to her sword. Galahad stepped into a defensive stance. Skif barely breathed.

Bedwyr exhaled and did what no one expected.

He spoke.

Not to them.

To whatever listened.

“Wardens of the Veil. You were forgotten, but not lost. We see you.” His voice was steady, layered with the weight of old magic. “Show us why you were taken.”

The response was immediate.

The walls screamed.

Not in agony. Not in malice.

In remembrance.

The quartz veins flashed, stuttering like dying stars. The air thickened. And the names, the lost names—returned.

Not on stone.

In voice.

A chorus.

A cry.

A plea.

They were not forgotten. They were stolen.

And something, somewhere, was listening.

The Singing Stone Pass pulsed.

Not like a heartbeat.

Like memory struggling to surface.

The voices had returned—not through carved letters or faded reliefs, but through sound itself. They whispered in a language older than Oberon’s Wall, older than Titania’s Veil. Their cries wove through the quartz-lined tunnels, rising and falling in broken cadence.

Gwyn could feel it—pressure against her bones, words pressing into places language wasn’t meant to reach. She gritted her teeth, fists clenching at her sides. "This isn’t right."

Bedwyr didn’t answer immediately. His fingers drifted over the strings of his lyre, teasing out notes that resonated with the hum beneath their feet. "No," he agreed softly. "But it’s familiar."

Galahad, always steady, watched the way the light shifted across the stone—how some veins shimmered, how others darkened. The pulse was selective, as though certain fragments of history had been allowed to remain while others had been stolen.

"The wardens weren’t just killed," Skif murmured, hovering near the wall, her wings flickering erratically. "They were rewritten."

She touched a section of stone where names had once stood, her glow dimming against the surface. "They should be here. They were here."

The breathing returned.

Closer.

Not an echo this time.

A presence.

Gwyn’s hand moved to her blade, but the instant her fingers curled around the hilt, a sharp jolt coursed through her veins.

Memory.

Not hers.

Not even the wardens’.

Something else.

She staggered.

A figure stood at the far end of the pass, tall, cloaked in lightless grey, its edges flickering as though half-existing. It possessed no features, nor solid form, just a suggestion of a face where one should have been.

"Hold," Galahad ordered, his stance shifting just slightly. Not aggressive. Not defensive. Just prepared.

Bedwyr’s voice barely rose above a whisper. "It’s watching."

The figure tilted its head. No eyes. No mouth.

Then, it spoke.

No breath. No sound.

The words arrived directly within them.

"This is not your history to claim."

The quartz veins flickered violently, the names quivering—on the brink of vanishing once more.

Bedwyr played a solitary note. It resonated with echoes of ancient grief.

"It was never yours to take."

The figure twitched. The air shuddered.

Gwyn, ignoring the tremor still running through her limbs, stepped forward. "Who erased them?" Her voice wasn’t a question. It was a challenge.

The figure blinked out.

The tunnel went silent.

Then, deep in the pass, a door unlocked.

Not a real door.

A boundary.

Something waiting beyond history itself.